Amateur astronomer of the Czech republic is a "sprite hunter." Every night his automated cameras in Nýdek scan the skies for exotic forms of upward directed lightning. On Aug. 14th, during the peak of the Perseid meteor shower, a sprite storm broke out:

"The sky above my hometown Nýdek was criss-crossed by sprites and meteors," says Popek. "I created this composite to summarize the action."

The sprites leaped up from a powerful mesoscale storm system (MCS) over the border in Slovenia, while the Perseids rained down from the ancient tail of comet 109P/Swift-Tuttle. They intersected about 100 km above Earth's surface in a rare confluence of electricity and disintegrating space dust.

Comment: In recent years it has been shown that there is actually a direct relationship between fireball activity, meteor dust in the atmosphere and our increasingly strange skies: